Friday, September 30, 2016

Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky: "I was born in the former Soviet Union, just as the space era got underway with the Sputnik launch. As a result of a random childhood encounter, I resolutely decided to travel to space, but instead ended up studying how stars formed and how the Universe evolved. Following my participation in the dissident movement in the USSR, I moved to Israel alone at the age of 18, where my physics upbringing occurred. I will talk about my scientific journey from pre-PhD studies in Riga (USSR/Latvia), Tel Aviv (Israel), PhD research in Cambridge (England) and post-PhD work in Israel, USA and Denmark as seen from many angles. I came to Goddard as the remarkable COBE project, led by John Mather, turned cosmology from a heavily theoretical and speculative field into precision science, which also transformed me and my way of thinking. I will then describe the origin of LIBRAE (Looking at Infrared Background Radiation Anisotropies with Euclid) and its potential as the project is designated to run through 2030+ with the Dark Energy European space mission Euclid."Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky, NASA/GSFC/Astrophysics, Code 665, and SSAI